Smoking ' Joe Frazier Passed Away

Joe Frazier, one of the biggest sports icons of the 1960s and 70s, passed away tonight from liver cancer at the age of 67. He was diagnosed less than six weeks ago and spent his final days in a Philadelphia-area hospice. R.I.P

Joe had no wife but left behind eleven mouths to feed..............a byproduct of his lustful loins.............in a such a rich nation like USA...........it tells a lot when a man of his stature is diagnosed with liver cancer six weeks before he dies..........................his highlife got the better of him like most iconic figures in the entertainment industry...............he died broke and could hardly assess first class screening like T-Scan....................biannual kind of attentive hospice care..................................

it reminds me of our own crooning sparrow in Mbarakah Mwinshehe who failed to pay less than four thousand Kenyan shillings to purchase six liters of blood transfusion..........following his fatal car accident somewhere in Nairobi killer roads.........each liter costed Kenyan Shillings six hundred by then.........not a soul was available to bail him out.......and he died in misery, too....learning the hardway.......................????????.

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 November 2011 09.04 GMT Article historyJoe Frazier in action against Muhammad Ali during their famous first fight, back in 1971. Photograph: CSU Archv/Everett / Rex Features

Muhammad Ali has paid tribute to his great rival Joe Frazier, saying: "The world has lost a great champion." Frazier, who had been suffering from liver cancer, died overnight at the age of 67, his family confirmed in a statement.Frazier beat Ali on points in the so-called "Fight of the Century" in 1971, but lost in two further meetings including the epic Thrilla in Manila in 1975. Today Ali said: "The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones."The pair had an at times fraught relationship, dating back to taunts Ali directed at his rival in the buildup to their famous trilogy of fights. But they were reported to have been on better terms in recent years.Boxing stars of a more recent era took to Twitter to share their thoughts, with Floyd Mayweather writing: "RIP Smokin' Joe. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Frazier family. We lost an all-time great tonight." The fighter known as "Money" continued: "My condolences go out to the family of the late great Joe Frazier. #TheMoneyTeam will pay for his Funeral services."Oscar De La Hoya wrote simply: "I will miss you my friend. RIP Joe Frazier", while Shane Mosley added: "Joe Frazier one of the greatest heavy weight champion (sic) ever. RIP."Joe Bugner, another pre-eminent fighter of the era widely considered to be the greatest in boxing history, lost to Frazier five months after being beaten by Ali in 1973. But it was the fight against Frazier, who visited Bugner in Australia for his 60th birthday last year, which the Hungary-born fighter felt was a turning point in his career."Joe Frazier was relentless," Bugner told BBC Radio 5 Live. "Here was a man about 5ft 10, he weighed about a stone lighter than myself, but he was so courageous and ferocious, you had to literally hit him with a sledgehammer to put him away. In 1973 I was 23 years old. I became a man after that fight because I realised you can't go through a career like boxing without seeing and feeling the power of the greats. I happened to have the privilege of fighting Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali and a few others but those two to me were the greatest. Joe took everything away I thought I had and made me realise I needed more, if I was going to succeed I needed a lot more."I'm so proud I fought him and I'm so proud he came to my birthday last year. It hit me like a lightning bolt when I heard he died."Vitali Klitschko, the WBC champion and brother of fellow heavyweight Wladimir, said Frazier's legacy resonated down the generations. "He was a huge fighter, huge champion, huge personality," Klitschko, 40, told the BBC. "I didn't have a chance to see his fights live because in 1971 I was just born, when Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali. In the Soviet Union professional boxing was forbidden but we studied and listened about this fighter a lot, and after that we had a chance to see the fights. It was a great lesson for all new generations. I didn't have a chance to meet him personally but I listened about him so much and that's why he will be always in the memory of the new generations."He was a great fighter and for me and my brother I want to say sorry for the whole of boxing because he died and together with him died a big era of great champions."The promoter Frank Warren believes his fights with Ali and George Foreman mean Frazier will be remembered as one of the sport's greats. Warren said: "He was part of that era of the best heavyweights there have ever been. The trilogy of fights that he had with Muhammad Ali, the tough fight he had with George Foreman and the good wins on the way &#8211; he was one of the most exciting heavyweights ever."People talk about Mike Tyson at the age of 21 &#8211; Joe Frazier, when he was a young fella, was every bit [as good as], if not better than, Mike Tyson."Foreman's long-time publicist Bill Kaplan, who worked with Frazier while promoting the two bouts with his principal client, said: "He was a very fun guy and he was a great fighter. The first fight with Ali, at the time it was considered to be the biggest fight promotion of all time and it probably still is. Ali and Frazier were both undefeated, Ali had been on a forced hiatus for three-and-a-half years and while he was gone Joe became what we knew as the undisputed heavyweight champion.

"Ali came back, had a couple of fights and then felt he was ready to fight Joe to prove who was the real heavyweight champion. I'm sure his proudest moment was when he won that fight."

Joe Frazier, former heavyweight boxing champion, dies Smokin' Joe Frazier, the man who handed Muhammad Ali his first defeat, has died at the age of 67 after suffering from liver cancer reddit this Associated Press guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 November 2011 04.38 GMT Article history Joe Frazier Heavywieght boxer 'Smokin' Joe Frazier. Photograph: AP Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion who handed Muhammad Ali his first defeat yet had to live forever in his rival's shadow, has died from liver cancer. He was 67. His family issued a release confirming the boxer's death on Monday. Frazier, who took on Ali in three momentous fights in the 1970s, including the epic 'Thrilla in Manilla', had been under home hospice care after being diagnosed with the cancer just weeks ago, according to aa family friend. Until recently Frazier had been making regular appearances to sign autographs, including a trip to Las Vegas in September. 'Smokin' Joe' was small by heavyweight standards, yet a ferocious fighter who smothered his opponents with punches, and packed a devastating left hook that he used to bring many of his fights to a premature end. It was the left hook that dropped Ali in the 15th round at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1971 to seal a win in the so-called 'Fight of the Century.' Though he beat Ali in that fight, Frazier lost the final and for many years was bitter about the role Ali forced him to play as his foil. "I am who I am, and yes, I whipped Ali all three times," Frazier told the New York Times in 2006. "Ali always said I would be nothing without him," Frazier said. "But who would he have been without me?" More recently, he said he had forgiven Ali for repeatedly taunting him. While the 'Fight of the Century' is celebrated in boxing lore, Ali and Frazier put on an even better show in their third fight, held in a sweltering arena in Manila as part of Ali's world tour of fights in 1975. Nearly blinded by Ali's punches, Frazier still wanted to go out for the 15th round of the fight but was held back by trainer Eddie Futch in a bout Ali would later say was the closest thing to death he could imagine. Frazier won the heavyweight title in 1970 by stopping Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round. Frazier defended the title successfully four times before George Foreman knocked him down six times in the first two rounds to take the title from him in 1973. Frazier would never be heavyweight champion again. He was diagnosed last month with cancer, his personal and business manager said. Leslie Wolff, who has managed Frazie for seven years, said the boxer had been in out and out of hospital since early October and had been receiving hospice treatment the last week.

[h=6]Associated Press[/h] Joe Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century.

Some people mean more together than they do apart, whatever the stage. Churchill and Hitler. Bogart and Bacall. Ali and Frazier. And for all the deserved accolades for Muhammad Ali, I've always believed that each at his best, Joe Frazier, who died Monday night at age 67, was the better fighter. And the better man.

After both entered the Madison Square Garden ring undefeated in 1971 for what was called the Fight of the Century, Frazier flattened Ali with a left hook and earned a unanimous and unquestioned 15-round decision that Ali didn't wait to hear. His jaw swollen, he hurried out of the ring on the way to a nearby hospital. He knew who had won.
The Thrilla in Manila in 1975 was awarded to Ali when Frazier's trainer, Eddie Futch, wouldn't let him answer the bell for the 15th round because "he couldn't see the right hands coming" out of his closed left eye, but Frazier soon talked freely in the interview area. When an exhausted Ali finally arrived, he described their epic in brutality as "next to death."
That evening, at a party in an old Filipino palace, Ali, his ribs battered, walked stiffly and sat stiffly, painfully offering a finger or two instead of shaking hands.
At his hotel, Frazier sang and danced. Seeing them both, if you didn't know what had happened in the fight, you had to think Frazier was the winner.
Not long after that, Ali had a party for his autobiography at the Rainbow Room high in Rockefeller Center. Frazier was invited, but would he show up?
For years, Ali had insulted Frazier, calling him a "gorilla" and "stupid." Frazier seethed; he once grappled with Ali briefly - and seriously - in a television studio before they were separated. But the night of the book party, he greeted Ali with a smile and "Hiya, champ" - the ultimate compliment from one boxer to another. Class.
To me, Joe Frazier won that night, too.
But the Joe Frazier I'll always remember wasn't in a boxing ring or at a book party. Soon after the Garden triumph, he was back home in Beaufort, S.C., where, one of 12 children, he had grown up picking vegetables for 15 cents a crate when not helping his father, a handyman who lost his left arm in an auto accident.
"I was his left arm," he said.
Ten years earlier, Joe had left Beaufort with about $200 in his pocket on a Greyhound bus bound for New York and a better life. He soon settled in Philadelphia, where he sometimes worked in a meat locker, battering a side of beef as if it were a punching bag - the inspiration for a scene in the "Rocky" movie.
Now, as the undisputed heavyweight champion who had earned $2.5 million at the Garden, he had returned to Beaufort in a maroon Cadillac limousine. He was there to buy a new-home site for his 62-year-old mother. "Dolly Frazier, the mother of the champ," she introduced herself. "How sweet it is."
That day they drove over to a nearby farm: "Trask and Sons, Fancy Vegetables," where Mrs. Frazier had picked radishes. "Four lots right here," said the land owner, Harold Trask, known as Beanie. "At $1,500 a lot, that's a good price. Or if you want twice as much property, from the corner down to that bend there, it's $3,000 an acre. And I'll sell you four acres for $9,000."
Joe and his mother listened and thanked Trask for his offer. On their way back to her shingled home between drooping moss trees, she said: "It's nice, high land. No swamps. And we owe him first choice for showing it to us."
"You say give him first choice, Momma," Joe said, his voice rising, "but he can't be first choice if he don't give the right price. He ain't giving you nothin'. He's selling it to you. He ain't giving you nothin' at all."
Back in his mother's home, Joe talked about how he had watched fights on their little television. "Sugar Ray, Hurricane Jackson, Floyd Patterson," he said. "Joe Louis was my idol. Down in the South, the black goes for the black." But soon he was talking about Trask's land offer.
"He's talking that white talk," Joe said. "He was saying that he wouldn't mind if I came over to his house for a cup of coffee. And tell me that I could come back down and live. I'll forgive, but I'll never forget."
I never learned what happened with that land deal for his mother, but Joe Frazier sure won the conversation about it. The next day, South Carolina state troopers escorted him in a high-speed motorcade to Columbia, S.C., where he was the first black man to address the State Legislature since the Civil War. Joe won that day, too. Just as he won at the Garden and "won" in Manila. Won that book party, too.
The record shows that Joe Frazier lost four fights - two against Ali (a mostly forgotten 12-round decision in a nontitle fight between their two classics) and two knockouts by George Foreman. But to me, somehow he always won.

ory Joe Frazier in 1969. 'I like to hit guys and see their knees tremble,' he declared. Photograph: AP

For all Joe Frazier achieved, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, who has died of liver cancer aged 67, was destined to remain in the shadow of his nemesis, Muhammad Ali, who twice beat him in the most famous trilogy of fights the sport has ever produced. The third of those 1970s encounters &#8211; memorably dubbed the "Thrilla in Manila" &#8211; is generally remembered as the greatest fight of all time.
A crowd-pleasing heavyweight, Frazier's relentless attacking approach included one of the most savage left hooks in boxing. Despite invariably conceding height to his opponents, the 5ft 11.5in Frazier, who had a crouching and weaving style similar to the one which made Mike Tyson such a daunting proposition several years later, used his stocky physique to unload frightening hooks to head and body. "I like to hit guys and see their knees tremble," he said. "I like to feel my strength and go for broke." It was this uncompromising attitude that earned him the nickname "Smokin' Joe".
It was Frazier's feared left hook which floored Ali in the final round of their first encounter and helped him clinch victory in what became known as the "Fight of the Century" at Madison Square Garden, New York, on 8 March 1971. "I was as mad as a junkyard dog at Ali," Frazier remembered. "A lot of people went to the fight that night to see [Ali's] head knocked off &#8211; and I did my best to oblige them."
The fast-talking Ali invariably delighted in using the more taciturn Frazier as his stooge. His relentless verbal putdowns of the man who became his greatest rival contained a cruel edge, and the effect of Ali's teasing lingered in Frazier's memory long after both men had hung up their gloves. Frazier never forgave his rival for branding him "an Uncle Tom". Ali also appeared to delight in calling him "ignorant" &#8211; a label Frazier hated more than any other.
This festering resentment came to a head on 23 January 1974, when the two men ended up wrestling on the floor of an ABC studio, five days before their second fight at Madison Square Garden, in New York. Although Frazier had reluctantly accepted an invitation from the broadcaster Howard Cosell to watch a tape of the first Ali-Frazier fight, the interview proceeded without incident until Frazier mentioned that Ali had had to attend hospital after their fight. Seemingly annoyed, Ali replied: "Everybody knows I went to hospital for 10 minutes. You were in the hospital for three weeks. You're ignorant, Joe."
This exchange led to both men grappling. Some observers felt that while Ali was play-acting, Frazier certainly was not. Both were fined $5,000 each by the New York State Athletic Commission for "deplorable conduct demeaning to boxing". "I never liked Ali," Frazier once reflected. "Sometimes, if we was alone talking about the wife and kids, he was OK. But as soon as someone else came in he'd start up and I couldn't talk to him. Before we fought, the words hurt me more than the punches."
Frazier was born into a large, poor family in Beaufort, South Carolina. His first job was picking vegetables grown by prosperous white landowners. Having dropped out of high school, he moved to New York at the age of 15, and then moved on to Philadelphia, where he worked in a slaughterhouse and first entered a boxing gym to lose weight.
An impressive run of success as an amateur was abruptly halted by defeat against Buster Mathis in the US Olympic trials of 1964. Mathis suffered the misfortune of breaking his thumb, however, so Frazier was dramatically added to the US team for Tokyo, where he won gold at heavyweight level, beating Hans Huber of Germany in the final.
This was to prove the platform for an outstanding professional career. Frazier duly won his first 11 fights by knockout. On 4 March 1968 he dispatched Mathis to claim the New York state world title. By stopping Jerry Quarry in seven rounds in New York in June 1969, he earned his shot at the undisputed world crown. On 16 February 1970, Frazier halted an outgunned Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round at Madison Square Garden to become champion.
Although Ali had been stripped of the crown following his refusal to undertake military service in Vietnam, many still regarded him as the true world champion. Frazier's points victory against Ali in front of a massive worldwide television audience at Madison Square Garden in 1971 suggested that he was destined for a long reign, yet a bewildered Frazier found himself derided in some quarters as the antithesis of Ali's black militancy and anti-war views. Frazier was particularly dismayed when Boxing Illustrated posed the question: "Is Joe Frazier a white champion in a black skin?" He subsequently found himself alienated by much of the black community.
Following further successful defences, Frazier's world title reign ended in chilling fashion in Kingston, Jamaica, on 22 January 1973, when the towering George Foreman floored him six times on the way to knocking him out in two painfully one-sided rounds. Frazier re-established himself with an exciting points win over Britain's Joe Bugner at Earls Court six months later only to drop a clear points decision to Ali in their rematch at Madison Square Garden, in January 1974. Frazier demanded a swift return and his knockout victories over Quarry and Ellis set the stage for the Thrilla in Manila in the Philippines on 1 October 1975.
Their third and final showdown was given added spice by the fact Ali had reclaimed the world crown with a sensational knockout of Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire. Confronting Frazier at a pre-fight press conference he announced: "It will be a killa, a chilla and a thrilla when I get the gorilla in Manilla." Frazier angrily recounted how his children were taunted by the nickname at school.
Following a breathtaking contest of frightening intensity, Ali's arm was raised after Eddie Futch, Frazier's trainer, refused to allow his battered fighter go out for the 15th and final round. "Sit down, son, it's all over," Futch famously told Frazier. "But no-one will ever forget what you did here today." Frazier himself recalled: "Man, I hit Ali with punches that'd bring down the walls of a city &#8211; lawdy, lawdy, he's a great champion."
Eight months later, a diminished Frazier again took on Foreman, only to announce his retirement after being stopped in five. For a time he concentrated on a singing career before launching a brief comeback. On 3 December 1981, Frazier fought out a lacklustre 10-round draw against former convict Floyd "Jumbo" Cummings. It was the last bout of a 37-fight career in which he won 32, drew one and lost four.
Frazier's son Marvis unsuccessfully challenged Larry Holmes for the world heavyweight title in November 1983. In June 2001 Frazier saw his daughter Jacqui drop a narrow points decision to Ali's daughter Laila at Verona, New York.
Frazier was inducted into boxing's International Hall of Fame in 1990. His autobiography, Smokin' Joe, was published in 1996.
Frazier was divorced from his wife, Florence. He is survived by his partner of 40 years, Denise Menz, and by 11 children.John Rawling writes: Without Smokin' Joe, the iconic status Muhammad Ali came to enjoy in sport might never have happened. It is one of boxing's oldest sayings that great fighters are made from the great fights they have, and the fighting styles of Frazier and Ali blended perfectly to create a stunning trilogy of contests. The fact that the pair had a genuine animosity for each other, at times nearer to pure hatred, only added to a rivalry that captivated fans as much as any in the history of boxing.
Frazier traded on snarling, swarming aggression, closing down the distance between himself and his opponent, bobbing and weaving his way through some punches while taking plenty of others before unleashing his trademark hooks to head and body with a ferocity that few could withstand. The massive-punching George Foreman was able to blow the smaller Frazier away with a succession of huge upper-cuts when Foreman took Frazier's title in 1973, but Ali never had the one-punch power to repel Joe and had to rely on his boxing skills and legendary reserves of courage to prevail.
The finest moment of Frazier's career was unquestionably when he floored Ali in the last round on his way to a unanimous points decision when they fought for the first time for the world heavyweight title in 1971. Ali's skills proved too much for Frazier when they fought for a second time, in 1974, at the same venue. But the brutal conflict of the Thrilla in Manila is the one indelibly etched into boxing history. Ring magazine made it their "fight of the year" for 1975, and with the 20-20 vision of hindsight it is surely true to say this was the heavyweight fight of all-time.
Frazier may have lost in Manila, and "great" can be an overused word in sport, but Frazier showed that there can be greatness in defeat and his contribution to the sport will never be forgotten.
&#8226; Billy Joe Frazier, boxer, born 12 January 1944; died 7 November 2011

[h=1]Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67[/h] Associated PressJoe Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century. More Photos »

His business representative, Leslie Wolff, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Frazier had liver cancer and that he had entered hospice care. Known as Smokin' Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with a crouching, relentless attack - his head low and bobbing, his broad, powerful shoulders hunched - as he bore down on them with an onslaught of withering jabs and crushing body blows, setting them up for his devastating left hook. It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the heavyweight crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, losing four times - twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman. He also recorded one draw. A slugger who weathered repeated blows to the head while he delivered punishment, Frazier proved a formidable figure. But his career was defined by his rivalry with Ali, who ridiculed him as a black man in the guise of a Great White Hope. Frazier detested him. Ali vs. Frazier was a study in contrasts. Ali: tall and handsome, a wit given to spouting poetry, a magnetic figure who drew adulation and denigration alike, the one for his prowess and outsize personality, the other for his antiwar views and Black Power embrace of Islam. Frazier: a bull-like man of few words with a blue-collar image and a glowering visage who in so many ways could be on an equal footing with his rival only in the ring. Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision over Frazier at the Garden in a nontitle bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila championship bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest fights in boxing history. It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye swollen shut, did not come out to face Ali for the 15th round. The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could stand alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing sanctioning bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to figure out just who held what title. The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an adherent of the Nation of Islam who had changed his name from Cassius Clay, came to represent rising black anger in America and opposition to the Vietnam War. Frazier voiced no political views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his consternation, as the favorite of the establishment. Ali called him ignorant, likened him to a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms. "Frazier had become the white man's fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart," Norman Mailer wrote in Life magazine after the first Ali-Frazier bout. Frazier, wrote Mailer, was "twice as black as Clay and half as handsome," with "the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the pits all his life." Frazier could never match Ali's charisma or his gift for the provocative quote. He was essentially a man devoted to a brutal craft, willing to give countless hours to his spartan training-camp routine and unsparing of his body inside the ring. "The way I fight, it's not me beatin' the man: I make the man whip himself," Frazier told Playboy in 1973. "Because I stay close to him. He can't get out the way." He added: "Before he knows it - whew! - he's tired. And he can't pick up his second wind because I'm right back on him again." In his autobiography, "Smokin' Joe," written with Phil Berger, Frazier said his first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was, he said, "a name that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing room before sending me out to fight: &#8216;Go out there, goddammit, and make smoke come from those gloves.' " Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect for him. "Joe Frazier would come out smoking," Foreman told ESPN. "If you hit him, he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad." Durham said he saw a fire always smoldering in Frazier. "I've had plenty of other boxers with more raw talent," he told The New York Times Magazine in 1970, "but none with more dedication and strength." Billy Joe Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the youngest of 12 children. His father, Rubin, and his mother, Dolly, worked in the fields, and the youngster known as Billy Boy dropped out of school at 13. He dreamed of becoming a boxing champion, throwing his first punches at burlap sacks he stuffed with moss and leaves, pretending to be Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles or Archie Moore. At 15, Frazier went to New York to live with a brother. A year later he moved to Philadelphia, taking a job in a slaughterhouse. Durham discovered Frazier boxing to lose weight at a Police Athletic League gym in Philadelphia. Under Durham's guidance, Frazier captured a Golden Gloves championship and won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He turned pro in August 1965, with financial backing from businessmen calling themselves the Cloverlay Group (from cloverleaf, for good luck, and overlay, a betting term signifying good odds). He won his first 11 bouts by knockouts. By winter 1968, his record was 21-0. A year before Frazier's pro debut, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship in a huge upset of Sonny Liston. Soon afterward, affirming his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam, he became Muhammad Ali. In April 1967, having proclaimed, "I ain't got nothing against them Vietcong," Ali refused to be drafted, claiming conscientious objector status. Boxing commissions stripped him of his title, and he was convicted of evading the draft. An eight-man elimination tournament was held to determine a World Boxing Association champion to replace Ali. Frazier refused to participate when his financial backers objected to the contract terms for the tournament, and Jimmy Ellis took the crown. But in March 1968, Frazier won the version of the heavyweight title recognized by New York and a few other states, defeating Buster Mathis with an 11th-round technical knockout. He took the W.B.A. title in February 1970, stopping Ellis, who did not come out for the fifth round. In the summer of 1970, Ali won a court battle to regain his boxing license, then knocked out the contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena. The stage was set for an Ali-Frazier showdown, a matchup of unbeaten fighters, on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden. Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the biggest boxing payday ever. Frank Sinatra was at ringside taking photos for Life magazine. The former heavyweight champion Joe Louis received a huge ovation. Hubert H. Humphrey, back in the Senate after serving as vice president, sat two rows in front of the Irish political activist Bernadette Devlin, who shouted, "Ali, Ali," her left fist held high. An estimated 300 million watched on television worldwide, and the gate of $1.35 million set a record for an indoor bout. Frazier, at 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and 205 pounds, gave up three inches in height and nearly seven inches in reach to Ali, but he was a 6-to-5 betting favorite. Just before the fighters received their instructions from the referee, Ali, displaying his arrogance of old, twice touched Frazier's shoulders as he whirled around the ring. Frazier just glared at him. Frazier wore Ali down with blows to the body while moving underneath Ali's jabs. In the 15th round, Frazier unleashed his famed left hook, catching Ali on the jaw and flooring him for a count of 4, only the third time Ali had been knocked down. Ali held on, but Frazier won a unanimous decision. Frazier declared, "I always knew who the champ was." Frazier continued to bristle over Ali's taunting. "I've seen pictures of him in cars with white guys, huggin' 'em and havin' fun," Frazier told Sport magazine two months after the fight. "Then he go call me an Uncle Tom. Don't say, &#8216;I hate the white man,' then go to the white man for help." For Frazier, 1971 was truly triumphant. He bought a 368-acre estate called Brewton Plantation near his boyhood home and became the first black man since Reconstruction to address the South Carolina Legislature. Ali gained vindication in June 1971 when the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction for draft evasion. Frazier defended his title against two journeymen, Terry Daniels and Ron Stander, but Foreman took his championship away on Jan. 22, 1973, knocking him down six times in their bout in Kingston, Jamaica, before the referee stopped the fight in the second round. Frazier met Ali again in a nontitle bout at the Garden on Jan. 28, 1974. Frazier kept boring in and complained that Ali was holding in the clinches, but Ali scored with flurries of punches and won a unanimous 12-round decision. Ali won back the heavyweight title in October 1974, knocking out Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire - the celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Frazier went on to knock out Quarry and Ellis, setting up his third match, and second title fight, with Ali: the Thrilla in Manila, on Oct. 1, 1975. In what became the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle, the fight was held at the Philippine Coliseum at Quezon City, outside the country's capital, Manila. The conditions were sweltering, with hot lights overpowering the air-conditioning. Ali, almost a 2-to-1 betting favorite in the United States, won the early rounds, largely remaining flat-footed in place of his familiar dancing style. Before Round 3 he blew kisses to President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, in the crowd of about 25,000. But in the fourth round, Ali's pace slowed while Frazier began to gain momentum. Chants of "Frazier, Frazier" filled the arena by the fifth round, and the crowd seemed to favor him as the fight moved along, a contrast to Ali's usually enjoying the fans' plaudits. Frazier took command in the middle rounds. Then Ali came back on weary legs, unleashing a flurry of punches to Frazier's face in the 12th round. He knocked out Frazier's mouthpiece in the 13th round, then sent him stumbling backward with a straight right hand. Ali jolted Frazier with left-right combinations late in the 14th round. Frazier had already lost most of the vision in his left eye from a cataract, and his right eye was puffed and shut from Ali's blows. Eddie Futch, a renowned trainer working Frazier's corner, asked the referee to end the bout. When it was stopped, Ali was ahead on the scorecards of the referee and two judges. "It's the closest I've come to death," Ali said. Frazier returned to the ring nine months later, in June 1976, to face Foreman at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Foreman stopped him on a technical knockout in the fifth round. Frazier then announced his retirement. He was 32. He later managed his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In December 1981 he returned to the ring to fight a journeyman named Jumbo Cummings, fought to a draw, then retired for good, tending to investments from his home in Philadelphia. Both Frazier and Ali had daughters who took up boxing, and in June 2001 it was Ali-Frazier IV when Frazier's daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde fought Ali's daughter Laila Ali at a casino in Vernon, N.Y. Like their fathers in their first fight, both were unbeaten. Laila Ali won on a decision. Joe Frazier was in the crowd of 6,500, but Muhammad Ali, impaired by Parkinson's syndrome, was not. Long after his fighting days were over, Frazier retained his enmity for Ali. But in March 2001, the 30th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier bout, Ali told The New York Times: "I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't have said. Called him names I shouldn't have called him. I apologize for that. I'm sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight." Asked for a response, Frazier said: "We have to embrace each other. It's time to talk and get together. Life's too short." When Frazier's battle with liver cancer became publicly known, Ali was conciliatory. "My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our daily prayers," Ali said in his statement. "Joe has a lot of friends pulling for him, and I'm one of them." Fascination with the Ali-Frazier saga has endured. After a 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, the Republican media consultant Stuart Stevens said that McCain should concentrate on selling himself to America rather than criticizing Obama. Stevens's prescription: "More Ali and less Joe Frazier." Frazier's true feelings toward Ali in his final years seemed murky. The 2009 British documentary "Thrilla in Manila," shown in the United States on HBO, depicted Frazier watching a film of the fight from his apartment above the gym he ran in Philadelphia. "He's a good-time guy," John Dower, the director of "Thrilla in Manila," told The Times. "But he's angry about Ali." In March 2011, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier fight, Frazier attended a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and told reporters that he had not seen Ali in person for more than 10 years.

"I forgave him for all the accusations he made over the years," The Daily News quoted Frazier as saying. "I hope he's doing fine. I'd love to see him."

But as Frazier once told The Times: "Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But who would he have been without me?"

[h=1]Joe Frazier: a wrecking ball who fought with frightening intensity[/h] Joe Frazier wasn't as balletic as Ali, nor as monstrous as Foreman, but he was a great heavyweight in a golden era
&#8226; Joe Frazier's life &#8211; in pictures

Worried eyes turned towards Philadelphia these past few days, knowing the news was bad, hoping without logic that Joe Frazier could beat the odds one more time. Outside the boxing community, however, concern was muted.
Frazier's liver cancer, diagnosed only a few weeks ago, was so advanced that, once initial rumours were confirmed, the news arrived more regularly, consumed with varying degrees of surprise or disinterest, so disconnected from the wider public imagination had Joe become. Smokin' Joe was very much a fighter out of his time. It was as if the respect he engendered in the 70s had not altogether survived the journey into an era of disillusion with the boxing industry, a sport seen as in decline through serial neglect.
If the medical bulletins had brought news of a more celebrated contemporary, however, mild hysteria would have infected the response.Muhammad Ali rose above the ring, rose above almost everyone on the planet for a while, and, inevitably, every update on Frazier's condition dwelt on their trilogy. There was no insult intended, because the first and the last of those collisions deserve places in the top 10 heavyweight fights of all time, yet theirs was never an equal partnership.
It was Ali who had the charisma. He shouted loudest. Louder than the planet. He made Joe a rich man and, for a while, they combined to return boxing to the pinnacle of public imagination once inhabited by the likes of Dempsey, Louis and Marciano. Without Frazier, Ali would have found other challenges. Without Ali, Frazier would have reigned longer, but surely not as lucratively.
There was, inevitably, a price to pay &#8211; for both of them &#8211; and the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Manila, on Wednesday morning, 1 October, 1975, was the settling place.
The Thrilla in Manila &#8211; conceived by Don King, embraced by the dubious regime of President Marcos &#8211; reached and maintained such a level of raw intensity that it is regarded by an overwhelming majority of respected observers as the most brutal of all heavyweight title fights. It is no exaggeration to say that either or both combatants could have died. Those who witnessed the 14 rounds it lasted first-hand talk of it still only in terms of guilt and reverence.
It was, said the fine American boxing writer Jerry Izenberg "the championship of each other". Neither lost, was the opinion at ringside; it was a fight between two courageous athletes, a fight that transcended titles and cash, temporarily seducing onlookers into suspending all considerations of mortality and good taste.
Retrospective praise did not impress Joe. He boxed for glory, sure enough, but for recognition too, and the belts which confirmed that. Hailed for losing did not heal many bruises. It was Ali that Imelda Marcos wanted to dance with afterwards. Except he couldn't, so battered was he. Frazier always reckoned he beat Ali two fights to one, that only the compassion of his trainer, Eddie Futch, prevented him going one more winning round in Manila as, unknown to everyone in the stadium at the time, Ali was ready to quit too.
Joe said later he was prepared to risk death that weird Filipino morning, scheduled to suit American television; I doubt it is a judgment he would have held with conviction as his health failed on him down the years; Ali had no such attachment to the battle &#8211; but, then again, he won.
Last summer, they shuffled into Madison Square Garden together, shells of legends, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their first encounter, the Fight Of The Century. That contest, during a New York newspaper strike, was a celebrity-fest that had Burt Lancaster on the mike for his one and only colour commentary and Frank Sinatra taking the photos. It was Ali's first defeat, and the man with an ego the size of the not-long conquered moon took it well enough. His behaviour in subsequent years was not so noble, whatever his protestations that he was merely selling tickets with insults.
The animosity between Ali and Frazier was long, genuine and unseemly; much of it came from Joe and the feud and was only put to bed in recent times, partly for the benefit of the media that helped make them. They went through the motions of reconciliation, like two old boys on a quiet verandah somewhere; all that was missing were a couple of rocking chairs, some sweet violin and a setting sun. Reunited for their 2011 Garden schmooze, Frazier said of the mute Ali, palsied by Parkinson's syndrome but still capable of a mischievous half-smile: "If I had a loaf of bread, I'd give it to him."
But once it was ugly. Frazier fought hard for Ali over his refusal to be drafted, and Ali repaid him with cheap shots he was ill-equipped or ill-disposed to answer in kind. So he took it out on him with his most eloquent weapons, his fists.
We should think of Frazier in his own right, too. He was a great champion, a feared adversary for every heavyweight of his era and worthy of consideration alongside all the hailed kings of his division. The memory is of a schunky ball of energy, not so balletic as Ali, nor so monstrous as George Foreman, but a force that burned with frightening intensity. There weren't many soft assignments after his first fight with Oscar Bonavena in 1966 (when he got up from two knockdowns to win on points) until the finish. He lost four times, but only to the best and only in world title fights, in 37 contests.
The fire, inevitably, went out. In 1981 Frazier and Ali fought again &#8211; but not each other. Their opponents were time and a pair of fighters barely fit to share ring space with them in their prime. Trevor Berbick embarrassed Ali in the Bahamas on 11 December; eight days earlier in Chicago, Frazier, returning after five years in retirement, drew with Floyd "Jumbo" Cummings.
Both were subsequently reduced to peddling their past, with contrasting success. A preserved cigarette the then Cassius Clay signed for boxing historian Hank Kaplan in the Fifth Street gym in Miami in 1961, went for $1,900 at auction many years later; some of his shorts and robes have brought bids of $40,000. At the International Boxing Hall of Fame convention in upstate New York in 2000, Frazier was charging schoolboys $50 for his autograph on a glove.
Joe says he lost many millions on land deals, fooled, apparently, by business partners. He walked with a cane, fighting diabetes, and toured intermittently with his band, The Knockouts. As recently as September, he was drawn to Las Vegas to watch Floyd Mayweather Jr and Victor Ortiz. He went for dinner with Gene Kilroy, Ali's old fixer and friend, a gambler and raconteur who knew everyone from Sonny Liston to Mike Tyson. Kilroy told friends Joe wanted to move to Vegas to cash in on the memorabilia market.
In the hotel lobby of the fight venue, Joe signed his name, alongside Ken Norton, Leon Spinks and Earnie Shavers. All of them had inconvenienced Ali.
Then Joe went home to Philadelphia, his plans unfulfilled, and was given terrible news.
Doctors told him cancer was eating away at his liver so viciously that he could not expect to live much longer. He went into a hospice and his family gathered around him. When the news leaked out over the weekend, in New York then across the globe, it was met with ritual sorrow.
Frazier is leaving us in reduced circumstances, a tale as familiar as it is sad and, surely, avoidable. He is embraced for the heroics that made him Smokin' Joe, an uncomplicated fighting man, naive perhaps, but dignified and honest. He never aped Ali and, in the end, he forgave him. There was much to forgive.
In his autobiography, Frazier lists his adversary thus: "Ali, Muhammad, see Clay, Cassius."
That was Frazier's time: when he was Joe and the other guy was Cassius.